"Manti Te'o causing NFL teams to mine social media more"

From USA Today

Review by Connor Massei in SRM 334 (section 3)

The article from USA Today.com explains that NFL General Managers and Coaches are focusing more on draft prospect involvement on social media than ever before. This focus is greatly due to the highly publicized Manti Te’o hoax, in which one of the NFL’s highest rated prospects was involved in a false relationship with an imaginary girlfriend. Te’o communicated with whom he believed to be his girlfriend strictly through phone calls and the social networks, namely twitter. NFL organizations, more often than ever before, have personnel that monitor prospects tendencies on twitter and Facebook. These tendencies and posts are closely analyzed and sometimes play an effect on players draft stocks. Personally, Te’o now has more pressure to perform on pre-draft interviews due to his involvement in the hoax and poor judgment that could be seen on social media. 

This article helps its audience to understand that NFL GMs and Coaches care more about prospects than their physical talents shown on the field. It is important to them that their players show character, and an efficient way to get to know a prospect indirectly is through monitoring of their twitter and Facebook pages. I think it is interesting how much of an impact the tendencies of prospects on social networks can affect their draft stock, or even prevent them from being drafted at all. This new practice by NFL organizations is just one more dimension for NFL hopefuls to be aware of throughout college and during the pre-draft process. The article is relevant to this course because as we have discussed in class, the social media plays an important role in sports these days. The fact that NFL teams monitor player’s twitters and Facebook pages demonstrates the ability for social media to potentially spark, dampen, or even ruin the career of potential professional athletes. Sports media greatly utilizes social networks, and this article is a prime example of why they are so often used.
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Review by Michael Civiello in SRM 334 (section 3)

In summary, this article goes over how the so called “hoax” of Manti Te’o is now making NFL teams and their executives re-evaluate their own ways on how they will evaluate college prospects prior to the NFL draft. It has quotes from two NFL general managers: Rick Spielman of the Minnesota Vikings and John Schneider of the Seattle Seahawks. Spielman is quoted as calling the evaluated players “social media players” nowadays. He talks about how teams are now digging more in depth into players’ social media pages. John Schneider of the Seahawks said the team has a security staff assigned to monitor social media pages of potential prospects the team is scouting.

Spielman and head coach Greg Schiano of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers both emphasized the importance of the interview process that teams get with players at the combine. They both said that the fifteen minutes they get with prospects, especially a player such as Te’o, will be very crucial in determining the player’s football smarts but also their character.

Social media is so relevant in today’s world, especially with the national media outlets. Many players do not have private pages and that makes them susceptible to getting looked at by teams that will monitor their pages. These players definitely have to be more careful because posting inappropriate tweets or pictures can cost players lots of money because they fall far down draft boards and potentially undrafted. It is dream to many of the prospects to play in the NFL and its sometimes unthinkable that something as small as a post on twitter can potentially ruin that dream.